OCCUPIED JERUSALEM, 19 May — The Palestinian Authority announced yesterday that Yasser Arafat will convene a meeting of the Palestinian election committee today as a 53-year-old Palestinian professor of political science from Nablus announced his intention to challenge the Palestinian leader in election for president.
A high-ranking Palestinian official said 20 ministers have offered to resign if Arafat decides to dissolve the Palestinian administration. The 20 ministers offered their resignations in a written statement, the source said.
Palestinian lawmakers have urged Arafat to approve elections by early 2003 and, in the meantime, slim down the Palestinian Authority government that has ruled parts of the West Bank and Gaza Strip under interim peace deals.
Arafat said on Wednesday new presidential, general and local elections should be held soon, then two days later said this could not be done without an Israeli withdrawal from occupied West Bank and Gaza territory.
Aides later clarified he meant an Israeli pullback from self-rule areas retaken since Palestinians rose up after talks on a final peace pact stalled in 2000, not from the entire West Bank and Gaza, captured by Israel in the 1967 Middle East War.
Abdul Sattar Qassem, the professor from Nablus, said he has a good chance of becoming president “if elections are held.” “Many people have supported my idea,” he said, “and while some have encouraged me others did not.”
The Palestinian resistance movement Hamas left open the door to its participation in the elections. The group, which boycotted the last elections in 1996, has indicated that it would consider fielding candidates in upcoming elections as long as the balloting has nothing to do with the Oslo peace accords between Israel and the Palestinians. “We do not recognize any elections that came as a result of the Oslo agreement,” Ismail Abu Shanab, a senior Hamas leader, said.
